Our Privacy/Cookie Policy contains detailed information about the types of cookies & related technology on our site, and some ways to opt out. By using the site, you agree to the uses of cookies and other technology as outlined in our Policy, and to our Terms of Use.

Survey: Having Kids Makes You Happier

byKaitlin StanfordOct 21, 2014

If you’ve got a couple of kids under the age of 18 at home and often think they're slowly driving you insane … you may want to think again. A new survey suggests those babies of yours are actually making you happier each day than you realize. (Yes, really!)

The research was all part of a survey conducted by the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, during which 131,159 adults were interviewed about their daily happiness. In the end, experts found that adults with kids at home were more likely to smile or laugh more on any given day of the week than those who without kids. And the gap was not small, either: 84.1 percent versus 79.6 percent.

But here’s the interesting part: While adults with kids at home were shown to be happier overall, they also proved to experience more stress on a daily basis, too: 45.1 percent versus 36.8 percent to those without kids. And not much of this differed between genders, either.

So what does this all mean? Sure, our kids may add to our daily levels of stress—after all, even if they’re not doing anything particularly stress-inducing, we're still worrying about their well-being every second of every day. But they also hold the keys to calming us down—by acting silly, by telling us stories about their days and just being the hilarious little monsters that they sometimes are.